SRI SOMESVARA TEMPLE, MOUNT SOMA, BUNCOMBE COUNTY
Today Todd, Susie and I went in search of the Shiva temple that we had heard about from a variety of people in Greensboro and an Indian gas station attendant on the way to Rehoboth Beach. A marvelous temple everyone said.
We drove out I-40 from Asheville and Clyde turned toward the mountains. We drove up a long valley of farms and mobile homes surrounded by what looked like junkyards with pieces of machinery and parts of cars that might be useful someday. At the end of the valley the road led up a mountain with large vacation houses of the well to do and at the top of the mountain, Mount Soma, we came to the Sri Somesvara Vedic Temple, with a visitors center and gift shop. The temple is the dream of Michel Mamas, an American who spent some time in the holy city of Hardwar in the lower Himalayas where the Ganges flows from Gangotri, high in snow capped mountains through Hardwar, one of four holy holiest Hindu cities on its path to Allahabad and then on to Varanasi and on Kolkata to the sea. The temple in 600 acres of forested land is visited by Hindus from the surrounding cities of the Carolinas but also by visitors from Florida, New York and California who often combine a visit to the temple with a visit to nearby Smoky Mountain National Park.
The 46 tons of stone for the temple including the images of the gods and the pillars and roof and even the floor were all cut in India to Vedic standards and shipped to the United States where the temple was erected by Shilpis, workmen trained in Vedic architecture. Every detail is true to the Vedic system of architecture. (The Vedas are the oldest and holiest Hindu scriptures, poems dedicated often to gods who have since vanished.)
No photos were allowed inside the temple but I have included a few from the website of Sri Somesvara Temple. Outside we visited Hanuman Park with a large statue of Hanuman, Nandi Park where there is a large statue of Nandi the bull who is Shiva’s animal vehicle and Ganga Park where a mountain stream splashes on two Shiva Linga, the stone phallic form of Shiva.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 